


Green Improbable Fields

by evadne



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexual Sherlock, Asexuality, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Supporting Character Death, implied references to addiction/substance abuse and self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evadne/pseuds/evadne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock works out what he needs to be happy. But he knows he doesn't deserve it, and he certainly never expects to get it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Improbable Fields

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a kinkmeme prompt, which I can't now find, but which went something along the lines of: 'Sherlock realises quite quickly that friendship is more important than romantic love; it takes John somewhat longer'. 
> 
> It was also written before series 2 aired, and isn't canon-compliant beyond series 1.

_i._ _forgive what I give you_  
  
  
It is after the pool that Sherlock first begins to be afraid.

 

Not that it might happen again, that Jim Moriarty or somebody else might wrap John up in a blanket of explosives, or touch a sniper’s dot to his head like a caress. Sherlock doesn’t plan to allow it to happen again.

 

He’s afraid only of his own irregular heartbeat at the memory of that coat peeling open, the way his breath stutters in his throat. There it is, a bald fact, clear as daylight in physical evidence: he never cared much before, and now he does.

 

The effect it will have on Sherlock himself is likely to be highly destructive. That’s fine. He’s destroyed himself precisely four and a half times in the past, and fully expects to do it again. He’d rather not, but it can’t be helped. He keeps his world packed down with needles and powder and smoke and sharp objects, and if he were to stop doing that it would overflow in a truly horrifying way and destroy him anyway, and probably plenty of other people besides.

 

But John – John isn’t the sort to destroy himself, thank God, and will probably last a long time without Sherlock. But this – what Sherlock is giving him – that might do the trick, in the end. Love like this ought to be a gift – _is_ a gift, even if one given only with the greatest reluctance – but that doesn’t mean it’s good or healthy or useful or likely to do anything other than hurt.

 

If Sherlock were a better man he would pull back at this point, leave John whole and unhurt and take away the terrible burden of being the sole focus of another human being’s entire limited supply of compassion.

 

He can’t bring himself to do that, though, so he will just have to do his best to limit the damage, and hope that, though he doesn’t deserve it, John will forgive him.

_ii. nightmare and cinders_

John meets a girl on Sherlock’s most ludicrously romantic case to date, and two years later – seven years after he first moved in to Baker Street – Sherlock attends a small, quiet wedding. Mary Morstan wears no jewellery except the six pearls she acquired during the case, and keeps her maiden name. John has his own practice by now, and can afford to buy them a small but not unattractive terraced house in Camden to move into.

 

Sherlock, due to John’s insistence for the last few years on his taking fees for at least some of his cases, can afford to keep renting 221b on his own, which is just as well, since the idea of somebody else moving into John’s room is not at all pleasant.

 

He has nightmares in which he surfaces from a body of still water to find a tiled room filled with ash, bits of what used to be people reduced to grey dust, settling in his hair and sticking to his skin.

 

He visits John and Mary very occasionally, when he can’t help himself. Mostly he lets John come to him. He looks up definitions of romantic love online and in the O.E.D, and considers it as a possibility.

 

He doesn’t especially want to kiss or sleep with John, although he thinks he’d enjoy the added intimacy. Certainly, he wouldn’t say no. He doesn’t actively want it, though, but then again sexual attraction doesn’t necessarily have to be part of a romantic relationship, according to some internet sources. 

 

But that type of relationship, from the evidence Sherlock has collected, is highly unstable; the statistic about 50% of marriages ending in divorce horrifies him. That wouldn’t be any good. And though the particular type of closeness involved would be quite nice, it isn’t really what he wants most of all.

 

He imagines that John married Mary but never left Baker Street, that Mary lived next door or down the road or even moved in with them That John kissed her and had sex with her and went out for romantic meals with her and they shared a bed and did whatever else it is that couples do. Sherlock wouldn’t have minded that at all. Since Mary is almost intelligent and surprisingly inoffensive, it might even have been quite nice. 

 

All he wants, he concludes, is for John to live with him, to have him around to endure Sherlock’s acerbic comments on his TV preferences and to yell at Sherlock for using the fridge for inappropriate purposes and sit on the end of the bed when Sherlock’s at his lowest and not say anything but let Sherlock cling to a soft jumper-clad arm and allow Sherlock to watch John's eyes shift shut to the sound of the violin.

 

So it’s friendship he’d like after all, then. Just a peculiar type of friendship, the sort normal people aren’t interested in, would prefer to replace with romance. John included. The sort of friendship that, for all Sherlock knows, doesn’t even exist. That doesn’t matter – he invented his own profession, he can certainly invent a category of socialisation – but it’s a pity he didn’t think of it or bring it up earlier, before it was too late.

_iii. we must use what transport we can_

Mary Morstan dies, very slowly, over the course of nearly a year and a half, ten years after getting married. John shrivels into a hardened grey ball, and Sherlock has to watch.

 

It’s over a year before any colour starts to come back to his face, and it’s only then that Sherlock tentatively suggests he leave the house that’s always going to be stained as _hers_ and come back to Baker Street.

 

A year after that, and they’re both almost happy. John’s still a little more compacted, a little stiffer and more prone to long periods of silence than he ever was, and probably he’ll always be this way. Sherlock’s still terrified of everything that might go wrong. But things are as good as they’re ever likely to be, and so Sherlock suggests politely to John the possibility of their having sex.

 

‘Excuse me?’

 

‘You and me. I thought we could try it, at least.’

 

‘Sherlock, why?’

 

Sherlock considers the appropriate answer. ‘I want to?’ he hazards.

 

‘No, you don’t.’

 

‘I do!’ he insists. It’s the truth, after all, even if not quite in the way he's implying.

 

John surveys him thoughtfully. ‘What’s brought this on?’

 

‘You’ll go again,’ Sherlock says, without meaning to at all. But he might as well finish saying it, now he’s started. ‘The grief will get better after a while, it’s already a lot better than it was, and you’ll start dating again, and eventually you’ll get married. Romantic relationships are important to you. And you’ll leave.’

 

John is staring at him, his eyes bluer than usual with an expression that looks like wonder. ‘Sherlock,’ he says, and then stops. Then, very fast: ‘You love me.’

 

‘Yes,’ Sherlock says. He is horrified that John knows, and in a moment he will have to beg for forgiveness, but for now there are practicalities to attend to. ‘Which means we ought to have sex, correct?’

 

John is grinning now. He rests a hand in Sherlock’s hair. ‘You don’t want to have sex with me, I told you. And – try not to be offended – I don’t actually want to have sex with you, either.’

 

‘Can we have a romantic relationship without sex, then?’

 

‘No,’ John says firmly. ‘We don’t need it.’

 

‘You do.’

 

John frowns, bites his lip. Sherlock watches his tongue flicker in and out of his mouth in an endearingly familiar gesture. ‘I always thought I did,’ he says, finally. ‘But I’m coming more and more round to your way of seeing the world. Well, you know, some of it. Not the dead-bodies-are-the-most-fascinating thing in the universe part, but – well.’

 

Sherlock nods, slowly.

 

‘Anyway, I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon. I don’t want to.’

 

Sherlock releases a breath as several things occur to him. First, and most important: John is not angry that Sherlock loves him, or even that Sherlock loves him in an infinitely bizarre and unclassifiable manner. He never forgave him because he never minded. He is, in fact, grateful. Amazed. Delighted, even. Which makes him a ridiculous and insane man, of course, but Sherlock knew that.

 

Second of all, all that research into types of lubricant was an utter waste of time, and Sherlock should delete the information as soon as possible, to make room for interesting things, like links between birth order and propensity to murder, or the different colours John's hair and skin turn at different times of year.

 

Thirdly, John loves Sherlock, and possibly in precisely the same way that Sherlock loves him. That must be very unusual, Sherlock thinks dazedly. Surely, the odds against this happening are enormous. Surely, this can't - 

 

‘Oh, stop thinking,’ John says fondly. ‘C’mon, you haven’t eaten a thing today, we’re going to Angelo’s.’

_iv. keep my appointment_

Sherlock would never have predicted any of this. Least of all the bees. But he’s an old man now, after all, and the noise they make is the most comforting sound he’s ever heard. Besides which, although he’d never admit it, and it goes against everything he thought he knew about himself, it’s rather lovely to put hours of experimentation and science and research and problem solving into a result which affects things that are still alive.

John still hasn’t retired, seems determined not to until he actually drops dead. Sherlock never really had a formal profession to retire from, so it’s hardly surprising that he’s still ready to race off to London if a particularly exciting case crops up, or that John, rolling his eyes, tags along. They can't run as much as they used to,  but they haven't let that stop them yet.

 

‘I’m sorry I left you when I said I wouldn’t,’ John says one cool bluish evening, looking up from his book. There has been no lead-in whatsoever, but Sherlock still knows what he’s talking about.

 

‘It’s all right,’ Sherlock says. ‘You couldn’t know that was going to happen when you said it. You still had a head full of Mary; you couldn’t imagine falling in love with anybody else.’

 

‘It wasn’t just that. I really believed what I said, you know. About friendship.’

 

‘And its importance comparative to romantic bonds?’

 

‘Yes. I still believed it when I got married, but – well, you know, there’s a gap between realising something logically and being able to follow it through emotionally.’

 

‘There isn’t for me,’ Sherlock says, perhaps a little smugly.

 

John reaches over to swat him. ‘I don’t think it’s true for everybody, mind, that friendship ought to come first. And, you know, my marriage to Chloe isn’t something I _regret,_ exactly – we did suit each other, although I reckon she’s probably far better off with the bloke she’s married to now. But I do regret moving out, when I’d promised not to. I should have asked her to come to us.’

 

‘She’d never have done it.’

 

‘No, I suppose not, but – I am sorry.’

 

Sherlock has never in his life had the opportunity to bestow forgiveness and mean it. It has nearly always been him that required forgiving, and that’s more true in his relationship with John than anywhere. And when other people had hurt him, he had either not cared enough to be angry in the first place, or cared too much to ever consider forgiving them.

 

Forgiving someone, he discovers, is a surprisingly perfect feeling. And the small smile on John’s face when Sherlock tells him he’s forgiven him is good, too. At some point Sherlock will have to get round to thanking John for giving him an experience he’d never tried before, and a pleasant one at that. Not, of course, that it’s the first time.  
  
  


For now, though, he just lies back on the sofa, watching the light outside soak into the clouds and disappear, and John reading his book, tries to guess what might be happening in it from John’s expressions. It is so staggeringly unlikely, this scene, he thinks, a chance in a thousand. Friendship that doesn’t mutate or get shunted aside. Adrenaline junkies who voluntarily move to Sussex. Stars unobscured by light pollution. Miles and miles of flat green fields. One violin, two pairs of reading glasses, absurd numbers of bees, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes in the middle of nowhere at sundown, feeling, for the first time in their stretched, fragmented lives, something an awful lot like peace.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this, and the section headers, are from the following poem by Louis MacNeice: 
> 
> Forgive what I give you. Though nightmare and cinders,  
> The one can be trodden, the other ridden,  
> We must use what transport we can. Both crunching  
> Path and bucking dream can take me  
> Where I shall leave the path and dismount  
> From the mad-eyed beast and keep my appointment  
> In green improbable fields with you.


End file.
